1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for driving a device such as a printer with a device driver and for controlling a display device to display a status monitor indicative of a status of the device being driven.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, operating systems capable of simultaneously running a plurality of application programs on one computer have become common. Examples of these operating systems currently in use include the multitasking operating system products from Microsoft Corporation, such as Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT, as well as UNIX operating system.
These types of operating systems allow a user to work on different types of application programs simultaneously with one computer and allow data to be moved directly between the application programs, providing an extremely efficient environment for data processing.
Software called "device drivers" have been incorporated with recent computers, not limited to those using the above-described operating systems such as printers, scanners, facsimile machines, and the like, in order to handle the integration of various devices with the computer and to provide interface between the computer and its devices.
In order to allow the computer to control a printer, for example, a printer driver program for interfacing with the printer has to be previously placed in a memory as a resident program. When the user attempts to print data through operating an application program, the operating system receives printing commands from the application program, and activates the printer driver resident in the memory to control the printing process.